Patrick McDonagh is a Montreal-based writer. He is the author of Idiocy: A Cultural History (Liverpool UP, 2008) and the director/producer of the DVD "And that is how I got free of my isolation": conversations on isolation - a documentary. He has also published articles on the history of ideas of cognitive or intellectual disability and autism, and the way these ideas are shaped in popular and artistic culture.

He is also a freelance writer who has published on the arts, culture, travel, science and technology.